Difficulties
by I-am-LMR
Summary: Ironic that having a near flawless bond with someone would be exactly what could keep them from enjoying it. He rolled over, away from her to take away the perfect view and to hide his severe discomfort from his partner should she wake up and look at him.


Difficulties

LMR

BA romance

No spoilers, doesn't matter when you place it. Can we put it back when Bobby had black hair?? No reason, I just love that hair. I miss that hair. Done whining now.

Rated T for sexuality

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"Oh, gag me with chilvary." Eames was looking at the floor with an eyebrow raised in disbelief. "It's freezing down there, Bonehead."

Bonehead was, of course, her partner, Bobby Goren, who was now making a bed for himself on the floor. He looked up, startled at her rebuke. "Well, there's no sofa, so this will have to do. It's fine." He shrugged.

"No _sofa_? What do you call this double bed here?"

"Yours," he answered softly.

"Yeah, 'cause I just take up so much of it. Your feet might hang off the edge, but I think the rest of you will fit."

"No, this is fine, really."

She sighed. "Seriously, you won't be able to work properly tomorrow if you're exhausted and sore. And that means you won't have my back. If you really want to be a good partner, you'll take care of yourself so you'll be at your best tomorrow. If you go and get yourself killed because you were too much of a gentleman to share the freakin' bed with your partner, I swear I will dig you up and murder you."

He knew she was right, and it was the fear for her safety that made him move toward the bed at last. "Only if you're absolutely sure."

She put on her most bored, flat voice. "I swear I won't try anything. Just go to sleep, moron." He still seemed reluctant. Rolling her eyes, she plopped one of the pillows in the middle of the bed, making a barrier. "Better?"

"Okay," he said, sounding very displeased with the situation.

"You know, this is really kind of insulting. I mean, is this why I don't have any dates: it's scary to spend a night in the same bed with me?"

"You know it's not-"

"It was a _joke_. Stop trying so hard to be nice. 'Night, Goren."

"Good night."

Logan and Barek were in the next room over, it was their watch now, and at least he could take some bit of comfort in the knowlege that Logan wasn't here to make fun of him. Because he had lied. Spending the night in the same bed with her was about as scared as he could get without being shot at. He was the smartest detective in the MCS, equaled by Eames, in his opinion, but every other cop on the eleventh floor had figured out ages ago what Goren wouldn't allow himself to understand until just recently. He loved his partner. No, he forced himself to think it properly, like an AA meeting, he thought sourly. The first step to recovery was to be honest about your problem. No mincing words. _Hi, I'm Bobby Goren, and I'm in love with my partner._ He could almost hear the chorus of Hi, Bobbys. Having a vivid imagination could be _so _annoying.

And right now, his imagination was running him around in circles. He was irritated at her, but that wasn't fair. She didn't know that this was very near torture. To her, it was a regular part of her job. Sleep in unusual places, deal with it. Sharing a bed with him probably felt no different than if it were a brother. That thought just made him more depressed. It also made him feel like he should be on Jerry Springer.

He tried to put his imagination to good use and think of it as some other cop there. Just any old guy on the force

sleeping there, big deal. But, alas, she wasn't sloppy enough. She wasn't flopped on the matress like a lump. She was lying perfectly on her side, toward him, of course. _Gee, thanks, Eames, my life isn't complicated enough. Look drop dead goregeus right _at _me. _She was lying in a position that a model might use for a photo shoot, perfectly graceful and elegant. Her hair was falling in her face. She hated her hair, and he couldn't for the life of him imagine why. It was soft and feathery, and the color was...well, be honest, he thought, I've never actually _seen _the real color, but I'm sure it's beautiful, and so is this one. He even loved the highlights that looked to most, like streaks. Okay, so they _were _streaks, but they were beautiful streaks. _Jeeze, I'm pathetic_, he thought. _I sound like a lovesick puppy_.

Perhaps it was because it was the most of her ever got to see, but he loved her arms. How arms could be sexy...well, hers managed it, anyway. Her muscles were perfectly toned, making her arms a perfect balance of strong but soft and smooth.

He doubted very much that she understood that the way she joked to him sometimes felt downright cruel. She had a tendency to talk about sex the way a lot of guys did. Talking about a nude model, she'd said no one could pay her enough. _Oh, great, I needed that nifty visual._ Some tediously boring list had brought the response, _stop it you're makin' me hot_. Without trying, his mind had instantly flown into problem solving mode in the worst way: getting into people's heads without any effort was not the best thing to do when your brain instantly analyses her personality and body and dutifully sets to the task of figuring out what really _would _make her hot based on known facts. She had no idea what saying these things did to him. It wasn't her fault, she was just being funny, and he tried to laugh the way he always did, while desperately trying to picture Rush Limbaugh in a bikini. He'd read that a lot of men try to solve complicated math problems, but he found himself figuring out the answer in aproxamately 5.2 seconds and once again imagining partner naked.

But by far the best, or in this case worst, was the smell. There were bits of her shampoo and soap, of course, but under that was _her _smell. Very few people could appreciate the individual way every person smelled. He could. When they worked in a tense situation, any kind of physical activity, the smell was so difficult for him to be around. He didn't consider himself a person driven by the base or carnal motives, and he certainly wasn't the macho type, but that smell got him the closest he ever came to feeling his own body get out of his control. Thoughts would swim through his head, absurd thoughts that usually involved kissing her forcefully until she felt as out of control as he did.

The smell was overpowering right now. Worse than it should have been, even. He paused, counting. When was the last time she'd needed to go to the bathroom every hour? Had she shown a slight cringe of pain and rubbed her abdomen? Looked like her back was feeling close to breaking under only the strain of sitting upright? The fact that he could always tell exactly where his partner was in her cycle was just so wrong, but he couldn't help it. He'd taken to stocking the floor's medicine cabinet with Midol every month so she wouldn't know that he was the one making sure she had it. And it wasn't that her slight shifts in...grouchiness drove him to it, either. He hated to see her in pain. She was always relieved to see that someone had left a bottle there, and figured it was some of the other women in the department setting some aside for the group. No need to embarrass her. He thought about the last time he'd seen those things...yup. She was ovulating. _Perfect_. That useless little part of the brain that had no comprehension of modern human life, no sense of the fact that the world was overpopulated to the brim with _Homo sapiens_, that still truly believed that the primary function of everything in the world was to reproduce, that stupid part of her brain was kicking the hormones into high gear. For the next few days, no matter what she was thinking or doing, no matter how entirely unsexy, she would be in a perpetual state of arousal.

And he could smell it. That wasn't fair to either of them. It was torture to him, and while his opinion of her didn't falter in the slightest, he felt it was a way of showing disrespect to her, an intrusion on her privacy. He felt guilty for liking the smell. Liking it, hell, he _loved _that smell. But how could he not?

He was painfully aware of the fact that the smell was activating his own endrocine system, telling him in some primal and outdated language that there was a potential mate in the proximity and he should get to work ensuring the survival of the species. It was blissfully unaware of the fact that he had long ago decided that it would be completely unethical for him to have children with his family history of painful mental disorders. And it certainly didn't realize that this woman, this perfect, kind, brilliant, and absolutely necessary part of his life, would need to kept away from that part of his mind and his body in order to _stay _a part of his life. Ironic that having a near flawless bond with someone would be exactly what could keep them from enjoying it. He rolled over, away from her to take away the perfect view and to hide his severe _discomfort _from his partner should she wake up and look at him. He drifted off to a night of dreams that were so good they made him miserable.

_Thank goodness, he finally looked away_, Alex thought. She let her body relax a little, letting her arm quit blocking any possible view of her breasts. She wasn't the slightest bit worried that he would try to steal glumpses at choice parts of her anatomy. On the contrary, poor dummy would stress himself sensless trying to make sure he didn't. She didn't want to make it any more difficult than it already was by letting more of her body show than necessary. With any other man, she would have been showing a lack of trust. With Goren, she was showing him a lack of cruelty.

And now she could not only relax her arm, but she didn't have to purposely close her eyes and not engage him with any kind of facial expressions. Staring at him stupidly wouldn't make things any easier. And she would have been. Fortunately, he was wearing long sleeves, so she didn't have a nifty view of what she knew had to be some impressive muscles, wouldn't be tempted to reach up, accidently, of course, and brush her fingers over them, see if he shivered. She wouldn't have to wonder how close she could get her face to a shirtless back before he noticed anything odd. Maybe, in her sleep, roll over into it. It would be so warm and comfortable there. And the blanket covered the parts of his body below the shirt, unfortunatel- no, _luckily_, the blanked covered him, she corrected herself..

But the blanket couldn't cover the smell. Before she'd met him, she probably wouldn't have thought about the smell, but he'd taught her too well. _Damn you, Goren, did you have to teach me an appreciation for chemical smells? You're pheremones are _killing _me! _His various scents always tickled at her, but right now, they were punching her in the nose, exciting and comforting at the same time. For some reason, her body was already...wait...was it, was she? Oh, God, had to be this week, didn't it? Her body was screaming for her to mate, and didn't seem to understand that this extremely sexy man, with his stupid sexy smells was completely off limits.

Suddenly, sleeping on the floor seemed like a good option.

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Alex woke up to the sound of the Captain opening the door of the room they were sharing.

"Oh, shit," Alex articulated. "We're never going to hear the end of this are we?" She sat up. "He tried to sleep on the floor, I practically had to drag him up here so he would get some sleep." Her face became serious. "You know he would never..."

"Of course I know that, just wake him up and get going," the captain, said, annoyed. "During Logan and Barek's watch, our perps moved. We've been trailing them, but we need to find a new location before we try to move in on them."

Eames picked up the barrier pillow and whacked Goren in the head. _Payback for turning me on, you big meanie_. "Up we get!"

"Wha-" he spotted the captain. "Oh, no. You know we didn't-"

"Relax, Goren," she said, grabbing her clothes and heading for the bathroom. "I already told him about the hot sex."

He grumbled. "You know, you're not so funny before I've had my coffee."

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Some years later:

It was about five in the morning when Bobby first woke up. He was going to let himself fall back asleep, he knew, but he was content to look stupidly at Alex for a minute, at the back of her head anyway. "I hope I'm not dreaming," he mumbled.

He started when she spoke. "Of course you're not. You're way too much of a gentleman to put me an x-rated dream without my express permission." She turned over and smiled.

"Yeah, right. Do you remember that stakeout when we had to sleep in the same bed?"

"Yeah, you tried to sleep on the floor, and I told you not to be ridiculous."

"I believe your exact words were 'Gag me with chivalry. I swear I won't try anything.'"

"Knew it was something like that."

"You should have let me. I always had trouble, but sleeping in the same bed with you...that made it so hard."

She was in a fit of giggles and it took him a moment to relialize why. "I _bet _it did!" she said through laughter.

He laughed, too. "You know what I mean. It was difficult. And I was terrified that you were going to roll over and see just how _difficult _it was."

"Well, you're too late to look embarrassed about it now, Ninny, especially with all the difficulties we've been having lately. I'm going back to sleep. Close your eyes, and try to get some rest, dear." She kissed him lightly, wrapped an arm around his chest, and they both went back to sleep.

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Please review! Love, LMR


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